Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Presents Flush Fiction Read online

  presents

  FLUSH

  FICTION

  88 Short-Short Stories You Can Read

  in a Single Sitting

  Compiled by the editors

  of the Bathroom Readers’ Institute

  UNCLE JOHN’S BATHROOM READER®

  FLUSH FICTION

  Copyright © 2012 by the Bathroom Readers’ Press (a division of Portable Press). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  “Bathroom Reader,” “Portable Press,” and “Bathroom Readers’ Institute” are registered trademarks of Baker & Taylor. All rights reserved.

  For information, write:

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute, P.O. Box 1117,

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.bathroomreader.com

  email: [email protected]

  ISBN-13: 978-1-60710-675-3

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Uncle John’s bathroom reader presents flush fiction.

  p. cm.

  1. Short stories, American. 2. American fiction--21st century. I. Bathroom Readers’ Institute (Ashland, Or.) II. Title: Flush fiction.

  PS648.S5U53 2012

  813’.010806--dc23

  2011051554

  Cover design by Michael Brunsfeld, San Rafael, CA

  ([email protected])

  First Printing

  1 2 3 4 5 16 15 14 13 12

  Thank You!

  The Bathroom Readers’ Institute sincerely thanks the people whose advice and assistance made this book possible.

  Gordon Javna

  Brian Boone

  Amy Miller

  Jay Newman

  Sheila Hart

  Claudia Bauer

  Michael Brunsfeld

  JoAnn Padget

  Kim Griswell

  Melinda Allman

  Sydney Stanley

  Cynthia Francisco

  David Hoye

  Jennifer Frederick

  True Sims

  Ginger Winters

  Annie Lam

  Tom Mustard

  Monica Maestas

  Lillian Nordland

  Thomas Crapper

  Contents

  What Is the Difference Between Optometrists and Opthamologists? | Eric Cline

  The Old Man Had to Pee | Corey Mertes

  Safety Drill | M. Garrett Bauman

  And Then | Joe Novara

  Dead Man’s Float | Sally Bellerose

  The Taste of Failure | Andrew S. Williams

  One Million Years B.F.E.: Diary of an Anthropologist in Exile | Merrie Haskell

  Checking Out a Geezer | Florence Bruce

  Prince Charming | Christina Delia

  Curb Appeal | Katherine Tomlinson

  Vanilla or Chocolate | Skye Hillgartner

  The Newest Edition of Richard Phlattwaire | Jess Del Balzo

  Two Urinals from Death | James Sabata

  Cold Is My Love | Johnny Gunn

  No Sweat | Phil Richardson

  Precision Forged | Adrian Dorris

  Death by Anything | Siobhan Gallagher

  Jiggs and Bob | Charles N. Beecham

  Wrestling with Alienation | Desmond Warzel

  Shoot for Jesus | Courtney Walsh

  Headhunter | William R.D. Wood

  My First Foreign Woman and the Sea | Robert Perchan

  Buttons | Edward Palumbo

  Black Lung and Broken Heart | Tom J. Lynch

  Irreverisble Dad | Kenton K. Yee

  Death & Taxes | A.J. Sweeney

  Brains for Breakfast | Beth Cato

  Clueless | Eric Pinder

  Mr. Agreeable | Kirk Nesset

  The Secret Ingredient | Rebecca Roland

  Late | David O’Neal

  The Perfect Camping Trip | Gail Denham

  The Unseeing Eye | Marsh Cassady

  Aftermath | Corey Mesler

  Rusty the Pirate (A Historical Feghoot) | R.W. Morris

  Between the Trees | Daniel Chacon

  14B | Nathaniel Lee

  Bitchy Fish | Robert Taylor and Lindsay Gillingham Taylor

  Duel | Darren Sant

  Biggest! Fan! Ever! | Sonia Orin Lyris

  The Right Job for the Man | Robert Pepper

  Moan on the Range | Douglas Hutcheson

  Confessions of a Husband Beater | Katherine A. Turski

  The Other Foot | S. Michael Wilson

  The Intergalactic Book Club | Daniel Kason

  The Not-So-Ancient Chinese Proverb | S.G. Rogers

  For Wile E. Coyote, Apetitius giganticus | Jason Schossler

  Around the Block | Courtney Walsh

  The Waterhole | Colleen Shea Skaggs

  Nothing | Douglas Smith

  Long Tossed Like the Driven Foam | K.G. Jewell

  The Boat | Steve Cushman

  Grandma’s Pillbox | Celeste Leibowitz

  In the Shadows | Janel Gradowski

  Kitchen Basics | Sealey Andrews

  A Star Gazer’s Manifesto | Sean Flanders

  On the Shore | Deirdre M. Murphy

  Detached | Noel Sloboda

  The Second Rudolph | Cindy Tomamichel

  A Glutton for Punishment | Thomas Pluck

  Charlie Makes His Way | Peggy McFarland

  Milk Jug Garden | Sally Clark

  Proof in the Pudding | Brent Knowles

  The Feminine Mystique | Elizabeth Creith

  Traces of Max | Cathy C. Hall

  The Sad Wonderful Life of Ed Fergler | Kathy Allen

  Return of the Zombie | Michael Penkas

  One Last Time | Cynthia Rogan

  Coffee with Anna | Ginny Swart

  Fresh Ideas | John P. McCann

  Mysterious Ways | David Steffen

  Health Tips for Traveler | David W. Goldman

  The Loom of Doom Galls Mainly in the Tomb | Barry Ergang

  The Souvenir You Most Want | Sue Burke

  ‘Til Death do Us Part | Elaine Isaak

  The Corporation | Megan Todd Boone

  My Wife | Steve Koppman

  The Hamster | Tara Laskowski

  Burn Baby Burn (The World’s Shortest Vampire Romance) | Jason Sanford

  Succession: A Facebook Parable | John M. Solensten

  Dr. Lookingood’s Extreme Miracle Weight Loss Powder™ | Andrea Brill

  Outside the Box | John Haggerty

  Excuse Me | Scott W. Baker

  A Great Weight | Joe Ponepinto

  From the Ashes | Jamie Lackey

  The Plum Pudding Paradox | Jay Werkheiser

  Where Has the Dog Gone? | Lisbeth Mizula

  Don’t Take This Personally | Richard Holinger

  About the Authors

  Let’s Get Fictional!

  Here at the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, we usually make books about real-life: true stories about origins, strange events, and the crazy world around us. With Flush Fiction, we’re taking a big leap: Make believe. Fiction. Stories that happened only in people’s heads. (True story.)

  In the last few years, “flash fiction” has grown into an exciting literary movement: super-short stories, all less than 1,000 words. We thought flash fiction would be a pretty great idea, perfect for those short, bathroom reading sessions. Except that, in keeping with our image, we decided to call it “flush fiction.”

  The stories may be fictional, but this is still an Uncle John’s book, so that means that there’s something for everyone here, and there’s lots of humor
and quirkiness. No matter what you like to read, you’ll find something in Flush Fiction, be it mystery, nostalgia, monsters, romance, or science fiction. And of course, lots of quirkiness and humor. (Be warned though—there is the occasional naughty word. We didn’t want to censor the writers.)

  Anyway, we hope you enjoy these stories. They’re short on words, but not on fun. Thanks for reading, and, as always…

  Go with the flow!

  —Uncle John and the BRI staff

  What Is the Difference Between Optometrists and Ophthalmologists?

  Eric Cline

  Ophthalmologists are idiots, that’s what!

  Oh, I could say an optometrist measures for corrective lenses. I could say an ophthalmologist is a medical doctor.

  But the real difference is: Ophthalmologists are fools, pinheads, JERKS, MOOOOORRRRRRONS!

  I work in a strip mall in the same big parking lot as a professional building. I’m with the Westegg Optometry chain. But inside, I run the show. Me. Dr. Albert Pope, O.D.

  My shop is between Chik-N-Rite and Pappasan’s Japanese Pizza.

  I had successfully avoided those who worked in the professional building. But one day, getting out of my car, I saw two roughnecks sauntering out of Chik-N-Rite carrying Rite-As-Rain meal-deal bags in their grubby paws. I had on my white smock with “Dr. Pope” stitched on the pocket. I tried to avoid eye contact. I knew they were trouble by their long white coats and stethoscopes.

  They blocked my path.

  “Weeellll, weeellll, whadda we got here?” That was Floyd J. Davis, M.D., M.Sc., F.A.A.O. He was in his late fifties, about fifteen years older than me.

  His sidekick was Daniel Kupperman, M.D., Ph.D., F.A.A.O. He was about seventy and looked as though he had grown more evil every single year.

  “You’re that fancy-pants optometrist next to the chicken place,” said Kupperman. Cruel eyes danced behind his thick glasses.

  “Yes, Dr. Albert Pope,” I said.

  Quietly.

  Looking at the ground.

  “I run Westegg Optical, pleasetomeetyou…” My mumbled greetings were interrupted by their horse laughs.

  “An op-tom-e-trist!” Davis sneered. “Well, Danny, you and I are oph-thal-mol-o-gists!” He made a meal of those words. “Optometrist. Ophthalmologist. They sound sooooo much alike. What could the difference possibly be?”

  Stepping up to my face, Kupperman hissed, “Well, for starters, remember the p-h-t-h spelling, fat boy. It comes from ophthalmos, the ancient Greek for eye. And what does optometrist mean in Greek?”

  “It’s opsis, meaning sight, and metron, meaning measurement,” I said.

  “Nah! It means chucklehead! Optometrist is Greek for chucklehead! Say it!”

  “OptometristisGreekforchucklehead…” I muttered fearfully.

  Davis stepped up alongside his henchman. He breathed Chick-N-Rite Clucker’s Choice Coffee fumes in my face. “And we went to medical school,” he hissed. “Where did you go?

  “I went to an accredited four-year school of optometry,” I said. “Sir.”

  “Oooh, four years! You hear that, Danny?”

  “I heard Floyd, I heard.”

  “We did four-year undergrad degrees in science, four years in medical school, three years in residency—”

  “—residency means training, chucklehead!”

  “—I got this, Floyd! Three years residency, and one to two years of fellowship. Fellowship is more training, chucklehead! And we take state boards and become Fellows of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.” He pounded the F.A.A.O. on his white coat.

  A wad of Davis’s spit landed on my trembling face.

  “And what does an optometrist do?” he said. “Aside from pound sand twenty-four hours a day? Why, you go to school to learn,” he switched to a high-pitched, lisping voice, “which lookth clearer, number three or number four? Number three? Okay, which lookth clearer now, number five or number thikth?” He twirled his left wrist limply.

  Kupperman pushed me down into a mud puddle, soaking my trousers.

  “I-I-I can diagnose glaucoma!” I wailed. I was interrupted by two hyena laughs. “And refer my patients to—”

  “—a real doctor!” Davis hooted.

  “Glaucoma, huh?” Kupperman said. “Hey, Floyd, when I was on ER duty yesterday, I took 17 pieces of glass out of some construction worker’s eyes. But heck, what’s that compared to diagnosing glaucoma?” He broke up laughing at his own “joke.”

  Davis pulled a Chick-N-Rite Chicka-Chicka-Cherry-Pie™ from his paper bag. He unwrapped it and dipped it in the mud.

  “I think since chucklehead here is so hungry for knowledge, he needs some cherry pie, don’t you, Danny?”

  “Yeah! Yeah! Make ‘im eat it!”

  I protested feebly as the filthy, sodium-rich dessert was mashed into my face.

  It was woman troubles that led to their downfall: some tramp Davis was having a fling with.

  She would hang around with them in the parking lot, passing a paper bag filled with hooch back and forth, listening to Puccini blaring from Kupperman’s parked Volvo.

  She was the chief budget officer for the county government: typical trash you get in your neighborhood when an ophthalmic practice moves in.

  It turned out Davis was seeing some museum curator on the side. When the budget babe heard about it, there was a big fight in the parking lot. I watched from my shop doorway.

  She screamed at him, saying he had a two-inch…er…endowment and that he’d gone to a state medical school instead of an Ivy League institution; the usual street insults.

  Kupperman, alongside Davis, said, “You need to calm your little CPA self down, missy!”

  That sent her over the edge. She clawed at both their faces, succeeding in knocking their glasses off. She stomped their spectacles to pieces in her rage. Then she left in a huff.

  Davis and Kupperman looked down at their mangled glasses, glinting in the late-morning sun. Then, slowly, they turned their heads to look at me.

  I stood up straight.

  I folded my arms.

  I waited.

  Squinting heavily, they slowly walked up to me. Their faces were filled with dread. When they got to within a few feet of me, they paused.

  I stood aside and made a flourish with my arm, bidding them to enter.

  They walked into my shop, their eyes cast down.

  “Boys?”

  They stopped in their tracks.

  “You asked once what the difference was between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist?”

  They waited, scarcely breathing.

  “The difference is, an optometrist…has a heart!”

  The Old Man Had to Pee

  Corey Mertes

  The old man with one arm sat at the end of the hotel bar and ordered another drink.

  “Another beer,” he muttered.

  “Another?” the bartender asked, before bringing the man his twenty-third.

  The man had been sitting on the stool without moving for twelve hours and was turning the color of Strega. He liked Strega. He liked it a hell of a lot. The man’s tastes were not typical. He liked Strega and grappa and mescal, and he liked the smell of bull under the hot sun of an open arena. He liked a lot of things. But not beer. Today he had to drink twenty-five beers without moving from his stool to satisfy a bet he’d lost to the one-armed face-punching champion of San Baques. It was a damn stupid bet.

  The old man ordered a plate of nachos, a Mexican soup, and a well-cleaned plaice. Nachos were what the Spanish ordered when they wanted chips they could put cheese on. He liked them. He liked them a hell of a lot. He liked things you could put cheese on and forget about. You couldn’t put cheese on beer without messing up the head.

  “Another beer,” he murmured.

  I must finish two more beers without bursting, the man thought. He remembered past bets worse than this one he had made with other people under different circumstances in distant places at other times. Onc
e on the Place au Coin de la Rue he had lost a three-legged race to an obelisk maker. He made the biggest obelisks the old man had ever seen, and God knows he’d seen some big ones in Florence!

  Another time, to satisfy a debt, he’d fought a dingo at night in the outback west of Brisbane with Aborigines watching. That’s how he lost his arm. Earlier, during the war, when the shooting had stopped and the others lay dead, he’d bet he could carry a grenade in his mouth across a magnetic minefield. Those were better times. Five more yards and he would still have teeth.

  “Another beer,” he mumbled.

  Later came the cliff diving and the sequoia-cutting contest, the ouzo tournament, and the sperm-whale hunts. Then he had to leave the good old country, but it was good. He’d had enough. Now he would finish his twenty-fifth beer and prove he was not a gynomoco again. He did not want that. The old man wanted to be one of the machos. Macho was what the Spaniards called a man with cavalero, which was a quality that showed he embraced the philosophy of existico. Existico was what a man believed in when he didn’t take any guanola from another man, which is what the other man gave when he had bigabalsas. When a man had bigabalsas the Spaniards said he could untie the knot of destiny with his teeth, if he had any, and raise the toast of piswata with his good arm. Piswata was what the machos drank, and he would have a piswata himself, he thought, if he ever finished his fish and his soup and his last true good best true damn beer.

  But he could not finish. Instead, he rushed to the men’s room a moment late, ruining along the way the meals of the nearest diners with a trailing stream and flatulent stench of nachos, macho, and gazpacho.

  “My, my,” the bartender said. “Isn’t it a pity to drink so.” Then he mopped.

  Safety Drill

  M. Garrett Bauman

  Dad was a safety maniac. He was convinced disaster had us in its crosshairs. By the time we were six, he’d taught us that pinworms, ringworm, and tapeworms devour people. During thunderstorms, he’d describe how lightning blasts the roofs off houses. At supper we heard tales of deadly flu, TB, rickets, hemorrhoids, cancer, blindness, and accidents that would leave us amputated, blind, deaf, and drooling.

  As a child I ran out the door to avoid a loose slate falling from the roof and decapitating me, and I ran past alleys in case a rabid dog lurked there. Dad lectured us about puncturing our eardrums when cleaning our ears, about becoming “impacted” if we didn’t eat spinach, and about being hit in the head while playing baseball and becoming brain-dead.